


Pedal to the Metal

by ZeroMonster



Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Jason Todd is Arkham Knight, M/M, Rivals, Sort Of, Street Racing, jaydick-fashfic: confrontation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29798142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeroMonster/pseuds/ZeroMonster
Summary: Jason Todd was one of the youngest car reacers in the world when he was lured into a trap and shot dead. Or that's what Dick Grayson and the rest of the world thought. Four years later, the Arkham Knight makes his street race debut in Blüdhaven.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50
Collections: Jaydick Flash Fanwork Challenge





	Pedal to the Metal

The thing about Dick Grayson it’s that he’s a fucking good mechanic. In the world of street racing, being able to tune your own car gives you an edge. But the reason Dick is the only one who can beat him in the race tonight is the _way_ he drives.

Jason knows the story as if he was there for it. As if it was fucking carved into his skin like the letter on his face.

Grayson, under his rich mentor’s eye, was modifying cars before he could legally drive. Not long before his parent’s murders, he was a menace on a motorbike that reached just over his father’s knee. It wasn’t hard for a child as stubborn as him to translate his knowledge of vehicles with two wheels, to bigger ones with four. Furthermore, according to Alfred Pennyworth, it was a conduit for his anger and grief. 

Jason knows a thing or two about that.

Everything is black and white, the road and the streetlights, as he takes the east exit in Blüdhaven’s Red Line District. An explosion of color comes in the form of other cars, when he approaches the start point at the top of Avalon Hill. They will race down the hill, cross Trawn Park, drive through a nameless street, away from the Blüd's stinky dooks, and finally, finish the race once they cross the bridge connecting them to Gotham.

Jason sees everything, from modified street cars to supercars in every color possible, some in neon, some with police car’s lights on the ceiling in a clear mockery of the real thing. He pulls over between a sky blue Lambo Huracan and a modified Mustang. He steps outside and his door brushes the italian supercar.

“Hey, idiot,” the other car’s owner said. “Be careful, stupid, this car costs more than your life.” 

Jason ducks back into the car for his ILM jacket and puts it on as he straightens, he gives it a sudden jerk and the loudmouth startles, getting back on his car.

Money isn’t everything, he thinks with a nasty snarl. If the car can’t drift, this asshole will be lucky to escape the race with his life. All Jason has to do is don’t stop him. 

The owner of the Mustang eyeballs him. “You new?” She asks. 

Jason’s father was a good for nothing, and his mother took refuge in drugs when he got arrested. Jason met Bruce Wayne when he lifted the tires of the man’s Murcielago. He didn’t learn until later that the car belonged to the famous NASCAR driver known as Batman.

Bruce was impressed with his knowledge of cars and not only did he pick him from the streets, he took him in as his son. He then helped Jason compete at Formula Three at age 14. These two things were a point of contention between him and Dick even before they met. But since it was Jason who ended up being tortured by Bruce’s racing rival, he figured his _brother_ couldn’t complain anymore. 

“I’ve been around,” Jason answered.

She was a little older than his twenty years, not that a thing like that mattered. Either you had what it took to race, or you didn’t.

“Is that a V6?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at her opened hood.

“Everyone wants a V8,” she smiled crookedly. “I just challenge them to race me.”

She reminded him of a younger Dick, of being in the passenger seat of Dick’s first car and hearing him laugh as he drove at neck-breaking speed, and saying, _“Who needs overpower when you can drive like this?_ ” 

He can still feel the adrenaline in his blood, his body shaking with it, watching the wind tussle Dick’s hair, looking at his hands on the wheel, his teeth on his lips, until Dick stretched his hand to his face and asked, “ _Little wing?_ ” 

And as if summoned, Jason hears him first. 

Although, it’d be more correct to say that he hears everyone else when Dick arrives. Under the half light, a beautiful black car with blue lines enters the circle of drivers. For a moment it’s surprising to see Dick standing outside the car with no support except his feet on the rolled down window, but of course, it’s not surprising at all. Dick always liked _spinning_ , a south african stunt-based performance on cars. 

Dick’s clothes are different tones of black, the only pop of color - and the only effort he put into wearing protective gear - is in two of his fingers on each of the gloves he wears. And his eyes. But Jason may be imagining that he can see them from here. Dick is older, less expressive, but his smile hasn’t changed a bit. 

Jason feels something twist in his chest, but then he sees who’s behind the wheel and he tastes bile. Drake. The new prodigy to who daddy buys all the hot wheels for. His replacement. The whistling and clapping of the other drivers suddenly grates in his ears. 

Dick touches the ground and Drake exits the car, he tosses the keys to Dick over the hood and throws him a sharp salute, then turns his attention to a convertible and the redhead sitting at the wheel. Jason wonders what Dick must have felt when Barbara left him for Drake. The thought lifts his lips into a smirk as he gets back into his own car. 

The 2017 Camaro is one of the muscle cars tonight, when Jason got it, he couldn’t stand being inside of it until he took it apart, modified it, and put it back together. Now, there’s no other place in the world where he feels safer. When the nightmares are unbearable he even sleeps inside, which only happens five out of seven days now.

The paint job is a simple grey and white but the lights on the interior can change to a neon blue. He watches as Dick brings the BMW closer, putting two cars between him and Jason. The M3 E92 has wings on the tail, to reduce the lift, that’s why they call him the Nightwing.

Jason is power, Dick is versatility. 

The blue light on the inside of the car sets his heart alight, he can feel the car rumble under him, anticipation below his skin. There’s a sound system that will play music for those who’ll wait here for the race to end, but for now it serves for the countdown. Above the rev of engines he hears: “Takeoff!” And they are off.

The supercars, designed to stick to the track, take the lead, but not for long. The drive down the hill isn’t straight, the curves are tight and dangerous. Here comes Jason’s favorite part: drifting. He uses the handbrake, and the back tires slide over the road as he hughs the curve, going sideways, tires squealing. The road and dark foliage blur outside the windows as he leaves several cars behind. Jason grins, the scar over his cheekbone distorting with the movement.

When he’s behind the wheel, everything else bleeds away, the horrors can’t catch up to him. He’s the one in control. Every movement, every decision, are _his_ to make. His life is in his hands, and it’s the only time his head clears. No more rage-fueled thoughts about Bruce, or the Joker, about how his torturer is still breathing, about how he was _abandoned and replaced_.

Jason’s engine roars, but the blood in his ears is louder. Jason, as the Arkham Knight, is going to take Batman down, he wants it more than anything else, but the desire to race Dick emerged when he heard he’d moved to this hell hole - the races in Blüdhaven are even more lousy than in Gotham, here, the police doesn't even come pretending to make arrests only to get some easy money - and it grew into another kind of beast. A wild thing. 

He wonders if the jackass that was driving the Huracan put his car into a wall because Jason doesn't see him among the cars that tear through the dirt path that bisects the park. The trees trap the moonlight, leaving them with their headlights, but Jason still sees clear as day when Dick takes the lead. Jason lets him, for now.

Six months before his kidnapping, Dick took him to Japan. They climbed Mt. Fuji and pushed each other into the snow. But the real reason they made the trip was so that Dick could teach Jason what he didn’t learn from Bruce. “ _You can’t come to Japan and not drift in the mountain roads_ ,” he said.

It's ironic that Dick taught him the Maji alley technique and now Jason’s going to use it against him in a race. As the serpentine road comes closer, Jason shifts gears and cuts in front of Dick. Not anticipating it, Dick doesn’t cut the wheel and loses control momentarily. Jason looks at Dick's silhouette in the rear mirror, and feels his body shiver with the knowledge that he put that tension on his shoulders. 

The Camaro sways left and right while he drives forward, and soon enough he exits the Maji alley. Now he can feel Nightwing coming harder after him. The trail is scorching, he’ll need new tires after this.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Come on, baby.”

Blüdhaven is rougher than Gotham, uglier, unworthy, but at least the rains are the same as back home. They leave entire roads flooded with water, creating an engine-choking hazard that street cars are equipped to withstand more than the sports cars. 

You don’t have to be a genius to know that a hot engine, plus cold water turns your car into a very expensive paper weight. Fortunately, the modifications he and Dick made to their rides _are_ kind of genius. 

His fingers prickle as he drives his car through the overflooded road, sheets of water raising with the turn of the wheels like the fucking ocean is parting. He loses sight of Nightwing and finds him again only when his car appears right next to him. 

They’re leaving the city now, the Sparng Bridge looms before them, the last stretch before Gotham proper. More cars are left behind.

 _That night_ , it wasn’t Bruce and Dick fighting, for a change. Jason was so angry he could barely see straight, and when Jack ‘the Joker’ Napier - long time enemy of Bruce in the racetrack - called him and challenged him to a race, Jason accepted and ran away in the dead of the night. What followed were the most painful and revolting hours of his life. 

When the Joker was done with him, he put Jason’s body on his car and drove it into Gotham’s bay. Jason shouldn’t be alive, but he was. Fucking thaumaturgy. 

Gotham's lights light up the sky and it swallows it, Jason hates and loves it. Through the windows, he can see Dick’s ecstatic face, like he would race Jason, haunt him across the country. 

That’s what love is, Jason thinks. 

The Sparng Bridge parts in two to let a ferry pass, all that’s left are straight roads, they’ll have to stop to let it come down completely. Jason doesn’t know what will happen if he and Dick stop. 

They get closer with every second, the bridge is down, but the safety ramp is up. Finally, with a punch to the wheel, Jason swears and slows down. Dick doesn’t. 

For Jason, driving is about control. For Dick, it’s the closest he gets to flying nowadays. Knowing this, Jason still didn’t expect for Dick to somehow make his car _jump_ the fucking safety ramp. As his car goes airborne for a heart-stopping second, Jason can do nothing but gasp a, _motherfucker_ , and fumble with the door handle to get out. More curses fall from his tongue, like the words are burning.

The night wind stings against his face and he flinches, then he feels stupid for doing so and forces him to appreciat it for its sobering effect, but as soon as Dick gets out of the car, he can think of nothing else. Somehow, Jason feels like that this whole thing was him climbing onto an altar and slitting his own throat.

Dick turns to face him, rattled, but uninjured, his car is done for, at least for tonight. The moment he looks at Jason he stops breathing. The sounds of the city fill the silence, until -

“Jason?” Dick asks in horror.

He’s bitten through his lip, Jason notices, as a trail of blood leaves his mouth. Jason was right, Dick’s eyes are really that blue.

"I think you hit your head, man I'm not -" he starts, derisively. But before he can finish, there's Dick, close enough to touch, and he does, he grips Jason's forearm with bruising force.

" _Jason._ "

Jason sighs, like this is ruining his night, while the hand tha's not under Dick's searing touch slides into his pocket and brings out a butterfly knife. He thinks about putting a real marthyr in that altar he was thinking about before. It'd break Bruce permanently.

Dick's breathing is coming out hard, Jason startles when he notices he's also panting. 

There's another option, he thinks. He could push Dick into the Camaro's leather interior, watch the neon light tint his skin blue, kiss him until their lips are bleeding, bite his scarred skin, ride more than just a car tonight.

It depends on what Dick says next.

"Hello, Dickie," he says with the less insane smile he's worn tonight. "Get in the car, let's talk."


End file.
